What makes you think that all hn visitors are "smart and technical".
And what makes you think that mastodon is walled by hardcore tech people only ot is a tech heavy community? My experience with mastodon is that it is used as much by non technical people as well. Your comparison with irc is not valid [1]
[1] although I would say irc used to be used by a lot of non technical people in the late 90's and early 2000's initially via web portals but many switching seamlessly to desktop clients such as mirc. While icq and then messenger were used for private communications with people already knowing each others well, IRC was the goto chat solution for people looking to meet other people with matching interest. Also acted as tinder before it was a thing.
And what makes you think that mastodon is walled by hardcore tech people only ot is a tech heavy community? My experience with mastodon is that it is used as much by non technical people as well. Your comparison with irc is not valid [1]
[1] although I would say irc used to be used by a lot of non technical people in the late 90's and early 2000's initially via web portals but many switching seamlessly to desktop clients such as mirc. While icq and then messenger were used for private communications with people already knowing each others well, IRC was the goto chat solution for people looking to meet other people with matching interest. Also acted as tinder before it was a thing.